Monday, April 27, 2015

Recently we in Serena camp were blessed with some cute
guests – thousands and thousands of them!

These little inchworms appeared one day and spent about 5
days moving through camp, devouring every leaf on every Orange-leafed Croton
bush in sight. Although initially somewhat adorable, these pests turned out to
be quite a nuisance! Imagine spending an evening picking 85 inchworms out of
your tent before you go to bed. Imagine going running and having to claw at the
air in front of you like a lunatic in order to remove all the inchworms
abseiling down out of the trees.Imagine
turning the light on to find you are standing in a pile of hundreds of
inchworms. Imagine trying to brush the little crawlers off of
your body only to have your hand come back covered in caterpillar slime! This
has been our life in Serena camp recently. Cute, yes, but also incredibly
annoying.

At one point the caterpillars took up residence by the toilet.

These inchworms are the caterpillars of a species of
geometrid moth, one that apparently has a particular fondness for Croton
bushes. We don’t really know why they
all appeared at once or what happened to them, but starting yesterday morning
there have been a LOT of moths around camp. This could be a coincidence, but I think they are our
inchy friends all grown up and back for another visit.

Check out the photos and video below, including a fight between some of the caterpillars over the last bite of Croton on the bush!

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